Rockville, MD – September 15, 2016
The Tower Companies is pleased to announce that nearly 100 employees and partners came together to participate in the 5th Annual Community Service Project, in Silver Spring.

Rockville, MD – September 13, 2016
The Tower Companies announced today that it has received LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification under the LEED for Dynamic Plaque at 1707 L Street NW.

Rockville, MD – August 23, 2016
The Tower Companies announced today that it has received a recertification of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold under the LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Management

Rockville, MD – May 2, 2016
The Tower Companies announced today that The Millennium Building is the recipient of the TOBY Earth Award, in addition to the Regional Grand TOBY Award for the Mid-Atlantic Region.

Washington, D.C. – September 18, 2015
Washington SmartCEO honored The Tower Companies as one of the area’s Healthiest Companies at an event with nearly 200 other CEOs and decision makers on Sept. 1, 2015.

Rockville, MD – May 6, 2014
The Tower Companies announces today that they have been named inaugural Green Lease Leaders by the Institute for Market Transformation and the US Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Alliance.

Rockville, MD – October 24, 2013
The Tower Companies announced that The Blairs has won the 2013 Pace Awards for “Innovative Community” for the Lifestyle Program from Property Management Association (PMA”).

Rockville, MD – July 26, 2013
The Tower Companies announces that it is the winner of two awards: 2013 DC Mayor’s Sustainability Award, and the USGBC Awards of Excellence Sustainable Business of the year.

Rockville, MD – April 18, 2013
The Tower Companies won three of the eight awards for their aggressive energy reduction plan at the 2nd Annual AtSite Engineer Awards, honoring hardworking building engineers.

Rockville, MD – April 16, 2013
The Tower Companies announced that they are the winners of the CEL & Associates, Inc.’s National Commercial Real Estate Customer Service Award for Excellence, for their entire portfolio.

Rockville, MD – February 14, 2013
The Tower Companies announced that The Blairs, located in downtown Silver Spring, will be transformed into a vibrant mixed-use, transit-oriented smart-growth community.

Rockville, MD – August 7, 2012
The Tower Companies announced today that The Blairs residential campus is the first Multi-Family to receive LEED® Gold Certification under the Multiple Building and On-Campus Building Group

The Blair Office Building is a multi-tenant commercial office building, built in 1963, with seven-stories above grade and one floor below grade. As part of their commitment o the Department of Energy’s Better Building Challenge, to reduce energy and water usage by 20% by 2020, The Tower Companies spent several years optimizing outdated systems and implementing a portfolio-wide strategic energy management program to establish benchmarks and goals, develop energy conservation measures (ECMs), and track progress through real-time data, analytics, training, and stakeholder engagement.

In 2014, The Tower Companies (“Tower”) completed the first solar photovoltaic (PV) installation on a large, class A office building in Washington, D.C. The system size is 30kW and is visibly located on the roof terrace of The Millennium Building, a 12-story property located in the downtown business area of the District of Columbia.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), plug and process loads (PPLs) consume about one-third of energy in commercial buildings. Tower sought out expertise from the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT), a DC-based nonprofit that promotes energy efficiency in buildings, and the Waypoint Building Group, a software and analytics provider for commercial real estate for solutions to reduce plug and process load energy in their multi-tenant office building, The Millennium Building.

Working with the DCSEU in 2015, Tower replaced more than 850 lamps and fixtures in the parking garage and below-grade back of house areas with high quality, ENERGY STAR and Design Lights Consortium (DLC) qualified lifetime warrantied LEDs.

The Tower Companies implemented a real-time water monitoring pilot program at a multi-tenant office building in 2015 and blew its goal out of the water (pun intended). Within a year, the team documented total water use reduction of 45% and the project had a payback of less than 6 months.

The Tower Companies is a developer and owner of multi-tenant office, multifamily, retail, and mixed-use lifestyle properties in the National Capital Area. Tower is committed to being an environmental leader in the real estate industry and is continuously striving to find opportunities to engage with stakeholders on sustainability. To help achieve this goal and attract sustainability conscious tenants, the Tower Companies pursued the first solar photovoltaic (PV) installation on a large, class A office building in Washington, D.C.

As a follow-up to The Green Edge, NRDC engaged with interested representatives of the commercial real estate sector to explore how property owners and developers think about GSI and conducted a workshop to develop and prioritize recommendations for implementing GSI at commercial development sites. GSI includes green roofs, rain gardens, cisterns, and other mechanisms that mimic natural hydrologic functions or that otherwise capture runoff on-site for productive use. Our Director of Corporate Responsibility, Eugenia Gregorio, was a participant in the workshop that resulted in this report and guidance being published by NRDC.

The Tower Companies started tracking building energy and water usage because it’s an opportunity to ensure efficient operations, reduce operating costs, compare our performance against similar buildings, and attract like-minded clients. Many local jurisdictions have started to require annual benchmarking including Washington, D.C. and Montgomery County, MD. In an effort to encourage and educate other building owners to understand the process and benefits for energy reporting, Tower completed a short case study questionnaire in partnership with Montgomery County’s Department of the Environment.

Even the best commercial buildings have “operational stray” – sensors break, schedules are wrong for the season, and switches are set to manual. NRDC’s 2013 report on The Tower Companies’ Real-Time Energy Management project provided detail on how Tower worked with AtSite to identify and correct stray in three of Tower’s commercial office buildings, reduced the costs of the program while producing savings, determined other values for Tower, and established lessons learned for others exploring similar programs. In this paper, we review certain key findings from the NRDC report and provide information from Tower and AtSite that offer a glimpse of the second year of the on-going program. Preliminary information (collected by Tower and AtSite) suggests the energy savings seen in the first year appear to persist through year two using similar methods as described in the NRDC Report. Based on Tower and AtSite reports of progress working with building teams, we provide an update to certain lessons learned, with an emphasis on engaging building staff.

The Tower Companies has been a dedicated partner of the DOE Better Buildings Challenge since 2013 and is committed to reducing energy and water 20% by 2020. As part of this partnership, Tower worked with the DOE team to create a case study about the benefits of implementing a Green Lease as a tool to help other industry partners.

The Tower Companies is the first two-time winner of the 2013 and 2009 DC Mayor’s Environmental Excellence Award, which were both earned for demonstrating outstanding achievements and leadership in sustainable practices that support the city’s Sustainable DC initiative. This is a short case study highlighting Tower’s sustainability efforts and positive environmental impact.

This case study examines the energy management initiative implemented by The Tower Companies, in three large, multi-tenant office buildings it owns and operates in downtown Washington, D.C. This case study found that Tower’s real-time energy management initiative achieved a 13.2 percent reduction in energy use over three buildings, showing that substantial gains are possible when building owners operate their buildings with attention devoted to reducing wasted energy use.

A real estate developer assesses its ability to capture the benefits of investing in LEED Platinum, Vedic Design, and EnergyStar components in new buildings. The building at 2000 Tower Oaks Boulevard in Rockville, Maryland is said to be the healthiest building in the National Capital Region. Does this matter? The case takes a deep look at many of the critical on-the-ground issues involved with innovative real estate development.

With the development of the Tower Building, the Tower Companies sought to create a premier corporate office environment for the booming high-tech market. The Tower Building was planned as a cutting-edge office facility within a mixed-use, high-tech campus called Tower Oaks. But Tower Companies partner Jeffrey Abramson wanted the building to be more than that. With a strong personal interest in protecting the environment, Abramson saw an opportunity to develop a “learning building” that would embody environmentally responsible development principles and enhance worker productivity and well-being.

The Tower Companies certified the first LEED® multi-family apartments in the U.S. called Blair Towns. The Blair Towns is a 78-unit apartment community located at The Blairs in Silver Spring, Maryland and represents a “Smart Growth” approach to multi-family development. This case study was completed by NRDC and highlights sustainability efforts made by Tower to achieve LEED Certification.